


Dream A Little Dream of Me

by Scrawler



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-25 10:18:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16659298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawler/pseuds/Scrawler
Summary: After protecting Harvey and his Father from The Greendale Thirteen, Nick begins to take an interest in the mortal boy. With a little bit of magic, Nick begins to peer into Harvey's dreams; he couldn't sell Sabrina on the concept of 'sharing', but maybe Harvey would be more suggestible.[Implied Harvey/Sabrina and Harv/Nick/Sabrina, but story focuses on Harvey/Nick]





	1. Say Nighty Night and Kiss Me

For the sixth night in a row, Nick placed the dream stone in a bowl, and muttered an incantation as he poured water from a jug, filling the bowl right to the brim. The stone began to shimmer, reacting to the spell. It was reaching out to its twin, which was hidden away on the outskirts of Greendale. Still chanting, Nick pulled out a thin rod of oak, and began stirring the water. Three brown hairs were tied to the end of the rod. The hairs belonged to Sabrina’s mortal pet, Harvey. Nick had collected them the same night he had slipped one of the dream stones underneath Harvey's bed. 

Nick pulled the rod out, and tapped it three times on the edge of the bowl. On the third tap, the water instantly turned as cloudy and grey as the sky on an overcast day. Nick smiled, and stared intently into the bowl. Harvey was asleep, at least, and dreaming. This brought the spells success rate up to 50% - half the times when Nick had tried to peer into Harvey's dreams, Harvey had apparently been too troubled to sleep deeply enough to even have them. The other two nights, he had been dreaming of his dead brother, imagining things so horrific that even Nick had felt the tiniest stab of pity. On those nights, Nick poured out the bowl, knowing it would force Harvey to wake from his nightmare. Nick had surprised himself with this act of kindness for the boy. 

Nothing appeared in the water for a moment, and Nick took up the rod, tapping it against the edge of the bowl once more. “Come on, come on!” It was like trying to get a clear image on an old television set, wiggling the- the… the metal stick, things! Nick had forgotten the word the mortals used for them. Nick was just about to give up when an image began to appear in the murk of the water. The familiar face of Sabrina Spellman took shape, and Nick breathed a sigh of relief. Not a nightmare. Or a nightmare that Nick could make use of, at the very least. 

Sabrina’s face was close to the surface of the water, as the dream was naturally from Harvey's perspective. She was speaking, though Nick could not hear the words - the magic allowed him to see through Harvey's third eye, but that was it. Audio cost extra. It was enough, though. Just the image of Sabrina told Nick that this dream would suit his needs. It was the old Sabrina, from before the night that the Greendale Thirteen walked the earth once more. Nick couldn’t blame Harvey for dreaming of this Sabrina. The new Sabrina was… Interesting, to say the least. 

With Sabrina acting the way she was lately, Nick had to wonder if he still even needed to follow through with his plan. She appeared to have genuinely lost interest in her mortal world and friends. Perhaps it was an act. Or perhaps the Weird Sisters had cast a spell on her. Or something else entirely. Nick didn’t know, but he had a cunning suspicion that whatever was going on wouldn’t last. Before too much longer, Harvey Kinkle, with his wavy brown hair and his empty, puppy dog eyes, would be back in Sabrina Spellman's life. And now that he was having a dream that wasn’t completely horrific, Nick was able to plant the seeds that would make that reunion all the more fun, for all involved. Nick plunged his face into the bowl. 

~

Nick was no longer in a room at the Academy of Unseen Arts. Instead, he was standing outside the entrance to the Greendale mines, a short distance away from the sleeping Harvey Kinkle, and the Sabrina of his dreams. They were standing just outside the mouth of the mine entrance, facing one another. “I’m really not sure about this, ‘Brina.” Harvey was saying, holding Sabrina’s hands in his. They really did make a sickeningly cute couple. 

“There’s nothing to worry about!” Nick said, approaching them. Harvey jumped at the sound of his voice, and spun around to see Nick. Dream Sabrina’s face contorted in a way that the real Sabrina’s face would not have been able to without some powerful magic, or some poor plastic surgery. The dream was not expecting Nick to be there, and as such, it didn’t know how to react. 

Nick would have to tread carefully, or Harvey's mind would reject him and end the dream. The spell was essentially a form of astral projection - a bit safer, as the psychopomps couldn’t get him inside Harvey’s mind, but not without its risks. Now that Nick had entered Harvey's dream, he couldn’t leave till Harvey woke up. With Harvey knowing what Nick was, it was possible that he might even work out that Nick was not just another dream, and that would ruin Nicks plans entirely.

“What are you doing here?” Harvey asked him, somewhat stuttering over the words. Immediately, the colour of the grass, the trees, the rocks, everything, began to dim, and darken. Harvey's mind was trying to decide whether this was becoming a nightmare or not. 

“Well, I’m here to escort you two down into the mines, aren’t I?” Nick said, trying his best to sound offended. He needed to fit himself in with the narrative of the dream. “I mean, that is what you invited me here for, wasn’t it?” The dimming of the colours stopped, and Dream Sabrina’s face began to smooth out once more. “Right then. Shall we?” He gestured down into the mines. 

Harvey stared down into the darkness, swallowed hard, and slowly stepped forwards. There was a shimmer in Harvey's hands, and a helmet appeared in it. He lifted it up onto his head and switched the light on. At the same time, helmets appeared on Nick and Dream Sabrina’s heads. That they hadn’t been there a second ago went unnoticed. Mentioning it would have raised suspicions in Harvey's mind, so Nick said nothing, and switched his light on. “Well then, ladies first!” He said to Dream Sabrina. 

“What? No! No, I should go first!” Harvey insisted, but Nick had managed to influence the dream. 

Dream Sabrina laid her hand on Harvey's arm and said “It’s okay, Harv. I’ll go first, and you two can watch my back.” Then she turned, and walked into the mine. 

~

The dream skipped. Harvey didn’t notice anything - from his point of view, it would have looked like a scene change in a film. However, Nick saw it all happen in real time. The world melted away around them - the trees, the mine, even Sabrina. Everything swirled in a greyish brown, like clay, with Harvey and Nick standing in the middle. The clay tried to form different things - the halls of Greendale High, Harvey's bedroom, the road leading to the Spellman house. These were all no doubt common locations of Harvey's dreams, and Harvey's mind was trying to decide where to take them next. In among the shapes, Nick recognized some things from the nightmares he had seen in previous nights. Harvey's dead brother, or the sound of his raging father, or Sabrina in the stereotypical garbs of a witch as mortals viewed them, cackling madly. The last one was hysterical to Nick, but he knew that to Harvey, it was horrifying. 

Nick leaned in close to Harvey, and began to whisper in his ear. “We’re going into the mines, Harvey. Take us to the mines. There’s nothing to fear. Sabrina is just ahead.” The world began to take shape around them as Nick tried to press his will upon Harvey. The walls of a cave began to surround them. A shadowy shape that could have been Sabrina appeared just ahead. Her voice echoed through the air, asking Harvey if he was coming. 

“Yeah…” Harvey breathed. “Yeah, we’re coming!” As he said it, the dream resolidified around them, and they were walking through a mine tunnel. The lights from their foreheads cast shadows that, if examined closely, made no sense in the way they fell at all. Nick ignored that, and put one hand on Harvey's shoulder, pushing him forward. 

“Can’t keep the lovely lady waiting, can we?” Nick winked at Harvey, who smiled weakly in return. They began moving a little faster. Dream Sabrina was ahead of them - whenever she came into view, she would be standing at a fork in the road, picking one path or the other as soon as they were close enough to see which she had chosen. Harvey tried to protest about her being so far ahead, but Nick waved him off. “She’s fine, Harv. We’re scarier than anything she’s going to run into down here.” Calling him anything less than ‘mortal’, much less a cutesy abbreviation, didn’t come naturally to Nick, but he must have sold it convincingly enough, as Harvey looked reassured. After a moment of walking in silence, Nick asked “So, what’re we doing down here anyway, Kinkle?” 

“We’re looking for my brother.” Harvey said. Nick noticed then the dents and the stains in the helmet that Harvey wore. “‘Brina says she tried to bring him back, but there was something missing. So I thought maybe we could come down here and find it, and then everything could go back to normal.” This wasn’t good - easy enough to step from this straight into a nightmare. One bad thought, and Harvey could slip straight into a downwards spiral. Dreams were tricky things. Nick would have to improvise. 

“So what is he like?” Nick asked, being sure not to speak of the man as though he were dead. “I’m an only child, myself. Always imagined having brothers would be the worst thing imaginable, but I hear that yours is quite the remarkable man.” 

“He’s the best!” Harvey responded, and in the present tense - excellent! “He’s always looking out for me. Always pushing me to go that little bit harder. I don’t know what I’d do without him…” The walls started to lose colour, beginning to droop like soggy wallpaper. No, don’t go down that path. Nick had to think fast. 

“Is he hot?” He asked. 

“Is- what?!” Harvey said, a look of horror on his face, but the walls solidified once more, as Harvey's mind was yanked away from thoughts of death. 

“Is he hot?” Nick asked again. They’d stopped walking, and Nick took a step closer to Harry, leaning in. “I mean, you’ve got a certain ‘boy next door’ charm about you, of course, but word is your brother could make - what’s that mortal phrase? ‘Make the underwear fall’?” 

Harvey snorted. “‘Make the panties drop’, and don’t be gross! He’s my brother…” He was blushing, but smiling. Together, they began walking once more. Harvey made no further reference to his brother, and Nick pulled him onto a conversation about his artwork, instead. As he did, he noticed that the details of the dream took on a more sketch-like appearance. Dreamwalking could be such a pleasant pastime. 

~

“... And it can be really hard to give any real sense of depth, when you’re drawing real life, y’know?” Harvey had been going on for a while now, but Nick didn’t mind. It gave him time to think about the next stage of his plan. “With comics, all you have to do is some shading and a few cross-stitched lines and that’s it. But when I try to draw Sabrina or someone… Wait…” He stopped, and Nick stopped with him. He’d finally noticed, then. “Where’s Sabrina?” He asked. 

“What do you mean?” Nick tried to play it off, but already, the walls began to melt around them. 

“Sabrina! Where is she?! We were right behind her but I haven’t seen her in a while now. Sabrina!” He placed his hands to the sides of his mouth and called her name. Nick tried to calm him down, but he got more and more irate, and the dream deteriorated around them as he did so. “Why are we here?!” The mines swirled around them as he yelled. “Sabrina?! Tommy?! Where are you?!” In the distance, Nick could hear other sounds. The sounds of rocks falling, and of Harvey's Dad yelling, and whispering voices saying what were no doubt dreadful fears and secrets to Harvey.

They were surrounded by the clay-like building blocks of dreams once more. Harvey's face was a twisted gasp of horror. But in this state, Harvey's dream could be shaped by anything, including Nick. Standing behind Harvey, Nick grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him close, whispering in his ear. “She was never here, Harvey. Sabrina didn’t come down here with us. It’s just me and you.” Harvey tried to protest, and the clay tried to take too many different shapes at once. Nick had to play to the narrative. “You wanted to show me some pictures, remember? You told me you hid them down here, so that your Dad wouldn’t find them, isn’t that right?” 

“Pictures…” Harvey echoed the word. “I wanted to show you… Pictures…” The cave began to reform around them. “Sabrina’s not here…” 

“That’s right. She’s at home, playing with that cat of hers, no doubt. It’s just you and me, Harv. Just you and me.” Nick squeezed his shoulders tighter, and the cave grew solid once more. “Feeling better?” 

Harvey nodded, then shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind. “Yeah… Yeah, I’m good. Come on, it’s not much further.” With that, he began walking down the tunnel once more. 

~ 

Nick couldn’t tell if Harvey’s mind had accepted the absence of Sabrina or not. The world around them stayed solid, but Harvey himself had become sullen and quiet. The cave tunnel went on and on, not turning or changing in any way. Nick had removed the main distraction to his plan, but now he didn’t know which step to take next, so he allowed Harvey’s dream to guide him. “Is it much further?” Nick asked. “I feel like we’ve been walking for hours.” 

“No, we’re nearly there.” Harvey answered, and right on que, the tunnel began to change again. Hand drawn pictures began to appear, lining the walls on either side of the tunnel. Most of them were of Sabrina, while a couple were of Harvey’s brother or random characters that Nick vaguely recognised as superheroes. They turned a corner, and found themselves in a cave that contained the entire contents of Harvey’s bedroom. Many of the objects within it looked more like drawings than solid objects, but a few things stood out as looking more real - the bed, the window, the desk where Harvey did his drawings. 

They spent some time looking over the drawings, Nick allowing Harvey to explain each one that held his interest in detail. Whenever an image of Sabrina was selected, Nick attempted to guide Harvey onto a different one. As a result, Nick ended up learning a lot more than he would ever have cared to about some people named ‘Roz’ and ‘Suzie’, and the plots of various comic strips, but it was all part of the plan. With each new image, Nick made all the right noises of approval, and asked all the right follow up questions, and before he even needed to make it happen himself, Harvey took them right to the next step in Nicks plan. 

“Nick, can I show you something a little more… private?” He asked, and Nick said that of course he could. Harvey dropped to his knees, and began scraping at the floor, which was still just the dirt and rock of the mine tunnels. A few scoops of dirt revealed underneath a metal box. Nick knelt down and helped Harvey to clear it off. It was a tin box, and not very large, but when Nick helped Harvey to lift it out of the hole, it weighed significantly more than what it looked. It landed next to the hole with a thud. “This stuff. This… Well, I don’t really want to talk about it. But will you look?” Harvey flicked open the metal latches that held the box closed. 

Inside, there were more drawings. The first one was another of Sabrina, but she looked different, this time. It was the ‘new’ Sabrina, the one that had burned the Thirteen, that was currently shacked up with the Weird Sisters. Not that Harvey had any concept of that. This Sabrina was sitting on Harvey’s windowsill. Nick looked up, and the formerly realistic window had changed into a larger version of the image in his hand. “This is the last time I saw her.” Harvey said, staring at the image of Sabrina on the wall. 

Rather than engage with it, Nick hurried onto the next image. This was a box of nightmares, no doubt, and spending too long on any of them would turn the dream sour. The next image was of Harvey’s father, Nick guessed from the way that he looked like an older, angrier version of Harvey and Tommy. He was slouched down on a sofa, with a beer in his hand. After that, came an image of Tommy in a similar position, though Tommy didn’t look so miserable as his father had. Tommy didn’t have any expression at all - he just stared, blankly, off the edge of the page. 

The next drawing caught Nick off guard. Although the woman in the picture was too far away to be made out clearly, it was safe to assume that it was Sabrina. She was tied to a stake, standing on a top of a pile of firewood and kindling. To one side, Harvey’s father stood, stabbing a torch down into the pile. Behind him, Harvey and Tommy both stood, expressions of rage on their face. Nick stared at the image for too long. In the distance, he heard the screaming and wailing of young women, and around them, the furniture of Harvey’s mind began to smoke and smoulder. Pictures started to blacken, curling and flaking at the edges. 

“Harvey!” Nick yelled, standing up. Harvey had his eyes shut tight and his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sounds. Nick grabbed his wrists and tried to pull them away, but Harvey put up a fight. “Harvey, you have to listen to me! Everything is going to be okay! Nothing has happened to Sabrina; she’s perfectly safe at home with her aunts! This is just fantasy!” 

But Harvey wouldn’t listen, and the dream started to burn and melt around them, while he muttered ‘It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault’ to himself. Though Nick could come to no actual harm in Harvey’s dream, the invisible inferno burning around them was still getting him feeling more than a little toasty. ‘It’s coming…’ Harvey said, breathlessly. ‘It’s coming back for me!’ 

“What’s coming back for you, Harv?!” Nick tried to pull his hands away once more. The boy was too strong, but his eyes did flicker open long enough for Nick to follow his line of sight. Harvey wasn’t looking at the picture of Sabrina burning, but into the box of nightmares. There was one last picture in the box, and as Nick bent down to look at it, his heart caught in his throat. He had to hand it to Harvey - few people could capture the likeness of the Devil as fully as Harvey had. The monstrous goatman was climbing up out of the ground, staring straight out of the picture towards Nick, like one of those paintings with eyes that followed people around the room. 

“It’s coming, it’s coming!” Harvey continued to insist, and sure enough, Nick heard hoof-like footsteps coming from the tunnel that they had come down. Nick dared not look. He was still relatively confident that this was all just a dream, but when an image of the Devil himself was involved, one could never be too careful. 

Instead, Nick stood up and went to Harvey. He wrapped his arms around the terrified mortal, using all his strength to wrench one of Harvey’s hands off his ears. “Listen to me very closely, Harvey. I’m going to cast a protection spell on us, but you’ve got to listen to words, and let them into your mind. We’ll be absolutely fine, just listen to the sound of my voice.” With that, Nick started repeating the same protection spell that he had used against The Thirteen. Of course, he had no real magic here, since Harvey had no real concept of magic, and his mind could only produce things that Harvey had at least some understanding of. What was more important was that Harvey stayed focused on his voice. The more Harvey focused on that, the less he could worry about everything else. 

The hoofsteps were getting louder, like strikes of thunder, and Nick could hear heavy breathing and snorting, as the sounds of Sabrina burning died away. He gripped Harvey tighter, and chanted louder, and faster. Harvey was whimpering, no longer saying anything intelligible, but Nick could feel him untensing, just a little. Nick reached one hand up into Harvey’s hair, trying his best to soothe the boy, despite having no real notion of what mortals tend to find soothing. It must have worked, though. 

Harvey’s arms came up and wrapped gently around Nick, as Harvey clung to him for support. His whimpering lessened, as did the feeling of burning that surrounded them. The hoofsteps began to sound strange, as if they were both approaching and getting weaker at the same time. Nick held Harvey’s head and put his lips right up to Harvey’s ear, and continued to whisper his fake spell gently. They stayed in that position till all the sounds had completely died away. 

Finally, Harvey’s body relaxed entirely, and the two pulled away from each other, as Nick ended his spell. The dream was all but gone, now. The walls of the mine had melted away, and even the swirling clouds of clay had begun to vanish. Darkness surrounded them now. Harvey’s eyes drooped, and Nick realised that his dream was coming to an end. Nick held him by the shoulders, guiding him down as Harvey moved from a standing position to a laying one - his bed materialising around him as he did. Harvey was nearly asleep, but he muttered something. “‘Brina… Where’s ‘Brina?” 

Nick leaned in and whispered into Harvey’s ear. “She’s gone away, Harv.” Harvey let out a sound of protest at that. “Don’t worry!” Nick stroked a hand through the wavy brown hair of the mortal boy. “It’s only for a little while. She’ll come back to you. And in the meantime…” Nick hesitated, wondering if it would be pushing it too far. But then, this is what he had set this all up in order to do. He placed a soft kiss on Harvey’s forehead. “You’ve got me looking out for you, okay?” The tiniest moan escaped Harvey’s mouth, but he was asleep. The dream around them wobbled, and in the blink of an eye, Nick was back in the Academy of Unseen Arts. 

Well, that had certainly been something, Nick thought to himself. It hadn’t gone completely to plan, but nonetheless, for a first attempt, that was remarkably successful. Opening people's minds to new ideas was a difficult job, even in dreams, but Harvey’s mind hadn’t rejected Nick, and that meant that the next time he entered, it would be all the easier. Tomorrow night, he would try again, and see if he couldn’t get Harvey open to the concept of ‘sharing’.


	2. Just Hold Me Tight and Tell Me You'll Miss Me

The next few nights passed without incident. Each time Nick tried to call forth Harvey’s dreams in the bowl, nothing appeared. Either Harvey was having trouble sleeping, or else he was managing to sleep without dreaming. Some small part of Nick hoped that it was the latter. Another small part of him was relieved, as Nick had no idea what it meant for Satan himself to be stalking a mortals dreams. However, a much larger part of Nick was mostly just annoyed. If it took too long for Nick to reenter Harvey’s mind, all the groundwork he had laid down last time would fade away from Harvey's memories, without even a lingering trace on his subconscious. 

He stirred the bowl with the rod bound with Harvey's hair, then tapped the side three times. He was in luck; the bowl turned into the murky grey that showed that Harvey was dreaming. Nick stared into the bowl and watched images start to form. It took him a few minutes to work out where Harvey was, having never been inside a mortal high school before. Harvey was in class at Baxter High. That was a good start. Nick hoped that Harvey might be having one of those ‘going to class in your underwear’ dreams that mortals apparently had so frequently. But the perspective of the bowl shifted as Harvey looked down at his work in the dream - fully clothed. 

Disappointment only bothered Nick for a second, though. Nick saw what Harvey was working on. Symbols of the occult were drawn over the pages of the book. Harvey looked back up at the board, and Nick saw a female teacher with long brown hair leading the lesson. Similar symbols were drawn over the blackboard. It was all gibberish and nonsense, of course. Harvey didn’t know enough about real magic for anything to make sense - his mind was no doubt drawing inspiration from movies and books and other such nonsense. Still, the fact that Harvey was dreaming about magic at all was significant enough. 

Nick watched the dream a little longer, but nothing seemed to be happening. There was no sign of Sabrina or the Devil, nor was there any indication that Harvey might be expecting them. A nice, simple dream, that Nick would be able to shape with relative ease. Dreams were fickle, unreliable things at the best of times, but this was as good as Nick could have hoped for. He took a deep breath - though there was no need for him to do so - and lowered his face into the dream. 

~ 

When he reappeared, he was standing in the classroom. His clothes had changed, from his typical black ensemble to what he believed Sabrina or Harvey might refer to as a ‘jock’. He had his objections to the outfit, but that it had been changed was a good sign - Harvey’s mind had automatically accepted Nick into the narrative of the dream. “Mr. Scratch?” A woman spoke. It was the brown haired teacher. She, and the entire class, including Harvey, were staring at him. “Do you have something you would like to add?” 

“Oh, er, no Ma’am. Just really enjoying the lesson.” 

“Well thank you. Would you mind finding your seat?” She pointed, and as she did, the dream rippled around them. On Harvey’s left side, there had been some other student - some tanned guy wearing the same jacket that Harvey’s mind had given Nick. The ripples in the dream were caused by him vanishing from it, emptying his desk for Nick to sit at, which he did. He winked at Harvey, who smiled back. Being accepted into the dream meant that Nick didn’t have to tread quite as lightly. They turned their attention back to the teacher. 

~

If mine tunnels and goatmen were Harvey’s nightmare, then this was most definitely Nick’s nightmare. Everything the teacher said about witchcraft and the occult was completely incoherent. Sometimes, she would begin literal gibbering, stringing together random magic-sounding words like ‘Enchantment’ and ‘Pentagram’ with a bunch of wordless noises. This was, however, preferable to when she was speaking in coherent sentences, since what she said bordered on offensive. Harvey’s mind would be skipping straight over this sort of thing, but Nick had no choice but to listen to every word of it. 

Nick wasn’t certain how long classes last in mortal schools, and time didn’t have any meaning within a dream anyway. Regardless, he found himself glaring at the clock on the wall, which had no numbers, and hands that wiggled around like worms. He tried to push his will into it, the same way he had when he put suggestions into Harvey’s mind in the last dream. It was significantly harder to change the shape of a dream when he couldn’t whisper directly into Harvey’s ear. Maybe it worked, though, as the dream shimmered around them. 

They weren’t sitting anymore, and the change nearly caused Nick to fall, but he recovered in time. Now the two of them were walking down the halls of Baxter High. “So, what did you think?” Harvey asked him. “Is that really what it’s all like?” 

Contradicting the dream now would be a risky move, but Nick couldn’t stomach the notion of reinforcing the insanity he had just had to listen to. “Eeeh… Sort of?” He managed. “The situation is a lot more nuanced than that.” That made Harvey laugh. “It’s not really something that can be taught that way. You have to be able to feel it. Plus, we’re all raised on it. The magic is as natural to us as speaking is to you.” 

Harvey nodded, and rubbed his chin, as if in deep contemplation. Eventually, he asked another question. “And is it true what Ms. Wardwell said about how witches are all really super nice people and the stories about them aren’t true at all?” He was suddenly very excited. 

“You what?” Nick replied before he could stop himself. He realised, slightly too late, that Harvey’s mind was trying to invent a narrative that would make his love for Sabrina more acceptable. He was about to try and reinforce the idea, but he must have hesitated too long. Harvey’s face fell into a frown, and the walls around them began to sag. Ahead of them, another student simply dissolved into nothing, as the dream began rewriting itself. Nick had to think fast. “Hey, it’s not like that. Witches aren’t good, or evil. It’s how we use our powers that define us, just like any of you mortals.” 

Nick focused hard on thinking about anything other than the fact that he was currently using magic to convince Harvey that he would like nothing better than to enter into a polyamorous relationship with Nick and Sabrina, since if that thought entered the dream, it might dilute his point somewhat. He seemed to succeed in calming the dream down, at least. Things returned to a solid state, though not before another change of scene. They were, once again, sat down. This time in that bizarre bookstore/café that the mortals loved so much. 

“So what’s it like?” Harvey was asking him, between sips on some overly frothy drink. “Being able to do that sort of stuff? What does it feel like?” Harvey’s mind was reaching out, Nick could tell. Harvey needed a way to contextualise what he had experienced, what he had learned, in the past two weeks. The only problem was, Nick had absolutely no idea how to put it in a way that a mortal could understand. Magic was just magic. He could no more explain it to Harvey than he could explain what a colour looked like to a creature with no eyes. 

He started trying to explain a few times, only to stop a few words in and shake his head. He could see the disappointment in Harvey’s eyes. An idea occurred to Nick. He didn’t need to provide a sufficient explanation of magic for Harvey, he only needed to give Harvey’s mind enough information to enable it to form its own conclusions. That didn’t make the job all that much easier, but it was a start, at least. “Roll up your sleeve, and give me your arm.” He ordered. “I’ll show you what it feels like.” 

Harvey looked confused, but he didn’t protest. He unbuttoned the cuff of his scruffy, unironed shirt, and pushed it up to expose his forearm, then laid it on the table. Nick held Harvey's wrist in one hand and turned it so that the underside was exposed, then placed the fingertips of his other hand lightly on the soft skin. Hoping that Harvey would feel what Nick wanted him to, Harvey began to slowly push his fingertips up Harvey’s arm. Harvey laughed a little. “Close your eyes. Imagine I’m not here.” Nick told Harvey, and delighted in the fact that the mortal boy followed his orders without hesitation. “Tell me what you feel.” 

“It… Sort of tickles?” Harvey said, a confused smile plastered on his face. Around them, the dream began to distort. Not in the way it had in the tunnels, but things began to shift. The walls wibbled like they were made of jelly. Objects began to float. The drink in Harvey’s glass began to turn, like a tiny whirlpool. “It’s weird.” He continued, as Nick continued pushing his fingers up Harvey’s arm. “My stomach feels… Weird.” 

“Weird is one word for it.” Nick replied. He was impressed by how well Harvey’s mind was shaping the experience. Some people talked of magic as something that came from the heart, or the soul, but for Nick, it came from somewhere lower. The stomach, and even lower than that. Could he push Harvey lower, though? “Focus on that feeling. This next bit might hurt, but don’t worry, you’re safe with me.” Harvey nodded, and Nick pushed his fingertips all the way up to the underside of Harvey’s elbow. 

He repositioned his fingers slightly, so that his fingernails were making contact with Harvey's skin, then began to drag them back down his arm. Harvey gasped. He tried to pull his hand away, but Nick kept hold at the wrist, till the reaction passed. He wasn’t scratching too hard - only the slightest line was left on Harvey’s skin as the nails passed over. Nick noticed that Harvey bit his lip as the nails trailed down his arm, and made the slightest of whimpers. The dream shifted around them, the lights growing dimmer, and the other people in the café fading away to nothing. 

Nick’s nails reached Harvey’s wrists, and Nick lifted two fingers off as he moved onto the palm of Harvey’s hand. Harvey’s body moved. He slouched down in his seat slightly, and Nick felt Harvey’s leg brush against his, just slightly. This made Nick look down, and for the first time, he noticed that he was no longer wearing the jock style clothing, but was dressed back in the way Harvey had known him to dress in real life. That was very interesting. Once his index and middle finger reached the middle of Harvey’s palm, he pushed them up towards the thumb, taking Harvey’s hand and holding it in his. “How did that feel?” Nick asked. 

Harvey’s hand closed around Nick’s. “Like…” Harvey said, half opening his eyes. He looked almost drunk on the sensation. “Like lightning. In… In my…” 

“I know what you mean.” Nick said, and winked. Harvey’s mind had created the exact sensation that Nick had wanted to inspire in him. The human mind was truly a marvelous machine. “Truly intoxicating, isn’t it.” He lifted Harvey’s hand, turning it over so the knuckles were exposed, and brought them up. He lowered his head, not breaking eye contact with Harvey, and kissed the back of the hand. 

~

Nick found himself back in the Academy. The dream had terminated almost instantly, though not so instant that missed the wide-eyed smile that appeared on Harvey’s face. The water in the bowl had gone clear. Nick laughed. Somewhere in Greendale, Harvey had just shot up in bed, no doubt confused and horrified by the dream he had just had. Nick wondered just how much of the dream Harvey would remember; whether or not he knew where the ‘lightning’ in his lower regions had come from. 

Nick attempted to recast the spell, stirring the pool of water once more, but he could not reconnect with Harvey that night. Had he drifted back into a dreamless sleep, or was he doing something else altogether? Only time would tell. 

Night after night, Nick was able to step once more into Harvey’s dreams. Through them, Nick learned more and more about Harvey; he met Harvey’s brother, hid Harvey from his father's fury, and saw Harvey’s first kiss with Sabrina. They walked through the mine tunnels together again, though they never found ‘the goatman’, as Harvey had named the Devil. Weeks passed, and many nights, Harvey didn’t dream, or else he was tortured by nightmares that Nick had to end for him. One night, he entered Harvey’s dream to find himself back in the café - Harvey was having a rerun of the dream where Nick had shown him what magic had felt like. Nick sat back in that one, and watched as the dreams embellished certain details. The Dream Nick seemed be a lot more fond of licking his lips, and stroking Harvey’s knee than he remembered being when the dream had happened the first time round. 

One night, after nearly a week of not being able to penetrate Harvey’s dreams at all, Nick was finally able to make contact again. When the grey water began to form images, he thought there was something wrong. Nothing was moving. The view was of the window in Harvey’s bedroom, and till the curtains fluttered, Nick thought he was looking at a still image. Harvey was just staring endlessly at the window, and the dream was showing no signs of changing any time soon. Harvey’s mind had trapped him in the moment after he last saw Sabrina. 

Was this a nightmare? Nick wasn’t sure. All of Harvey’s previous nightmares had definitely been a lot more graphic than this, and yet, there was something oddly harrowing about it. Especially in the way that Harvey’s perspective never moved. He didn’t even appear to be blinking. Blinking wasn’t strictly necessary in a dream - eyes stayed as moist and protected as the mind wanted them to be, regardless - but everything about the scene looked just a little bit disturbing. 

Nonetheless, Nick had managed to establish a link with Harvey for the first time in a week, and he wasn’t able to let this opportunity pass him by. Nick plunged once more into the depths of Harvey’s dreams. 

~

Nick appeared in Harvey’s bedroom, and immediately discovered a part of the dream that the bowl was unable to show him. The air was filled with Sabrina’s voice, echoing throughout the room. 

“So let's say you're a kid, a normal kid, with a normal life. And one day you wander into a cave, and this wizard who lives in the cave, says he'll grant you all these superpowers.” 

“I’m leaving my girlhood behind.” 

“But the wizard he says that in exchange for these powers, you have to give up everything else in your life.” 

“I love you, Harvey Kinkle.” 

“Your school, your friends, your girlfriend. What would you do?”

Nick could only assume that he was hearing snippets of conversations between Sabrina and Harvey, that were currently bouncing around inside Harvey’s mind, tormenting him endlessly. So far as Nick knew, Harvey still hadn’t seen Sabrina since the night of the Greendale Thirteen, which had been weeks ago, now. Yet he still hadn’t stopped pining over her. If anything, he seemed to be getting worse. This must be what mortals meant when they said that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’. 

He couldn’t help but find something adorable about Harvey in this dream. Harvey was sat on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest, staring blankly at the window where he had last seen Sabrina. Nick was reminded of a lost little puppy dog, sat at the front door, waiting for it’s master to return home. Harvey hadn’t even seemed to notice the sudden appearance of another man inside his bedroom, till Nick sat down on the bed next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. 

Harvey slowly turned to look at Nick. He didn’t seem surprised that the Warlock was there. “She’s not coming back, is she?” He asked. He wasn’t crying, but the redness around his eyes and the marks on his cheeks showed Nick that he had been. How long had he been sat here like this, in his own personal limbo? Nick almost wished that he had tipped the bowl out and forced Harvey out of this nightmare. When Nick didn’t reply, Harvey turned back to the window. 

Nick had no answer for him, since even Nick couldn’t work out what was going through Sabrina’s mind these days. Ever since the night of the Thirteen, she had been perfectly frosty to pretty much everyone. Even The Weird Sisters didn’t seem to be her friends, so much as Prudence just happened to enjoy Sabrina’s new attitude. Whatever it was that Sabrina had done to stop the witches, the price for it had been high, and not just for her. 

For a while, they just sat there, listening to the echoes of Sabrina’s voice. Despite how miserable Harvey seemed, the dream itself was stable. No melting walls, no wailing screams, no goatmen. Harvey’s mind was solely fixated on the absence of Sabrina Spellman in his life, so much so that it was preventing him from dwelling on the other demons that were troubling him. Nick struggled to imagine what that must feel like. The closest thing he had to an obsession like that was Edward Spellman’s journals, and somehow Nick doubted that it was comparable. 

“Will you stay with me?” The question caught Nick off guard. Harvey was looking at him again, his watery, puppydog eyes boring into Nick like thumb screws. “It’s not as bad when you’re here.” 

Nick smiled, and twisted so that he could lay down on the bed. He put his hands behind his head and kicked off his shoes, striking a pose of perfect relaxation. “Of course! I’m not going anywhere. I said as much, didn’t I?” Nick had no idea whether Harvey could actually remember that dream, or whether he had any awareness that he was dreaming now. “So tell me, what do you mor-” 

But before Nick could get his question out, Harvey uncurled from his balled up position, stretching out and laying down next to Nick, his head coming down right next to Nick’s, resting in the crevice of Nick’s neck. A hand laid down on Nicks chest, and Nick felt something damp on his neck - He thought Harvey had kissed him, and wondered how on Earth he’d managed to make things progress so quickly. He soon realised that it wasn’t a kiss, but a tear. 

Nick sighed, and brought his hands out from behind his head, wrapping one around Harvey’s shoulders, and placing the other on top of Harvey’s hand. They stayed there, unmoving, as Sabrina’s voice died away to nothing, and the room around them faded out. Nick couldn’t really tell exactly how long they stayed like that, before he finally drifted out of the dream and back to the Academy room that his body was really in. Even after his consciousness returned to his body, Nick thought he could still feel Harvey’s body weight pressed against him.


	3. When I'm Alone and Blue As Can Be

Nick stepped into Harvey’s dream once more, and sat down next to him on the bed. They were not in Harvey’s bedroom, as such - Harvey’s mind was no longer constructing the entire thing - but fragmented elements of it were there. The bed, the window, the door, and above them, floating in a dark grey void, various drawings of Harvey’s. The floor was covered in a thin layer of snow, much like it was outside in the real world. 

It was December, and nearly a month since Sabrina clashed with the Greendale Thirteen. Since NIck first found himself in Harvey’s bedroom a few days ago, there had been no more nightmares, nor dreams of any kind except this. Just Harvey, sat on a bed, staring at the window, hoping Sabrina would come flying through it. Her voice no longer echoed about, and there were no hints of her around, not even in the drawings that floated around them, but there was nothing else that Harvey might have been dreaming about, that Nick could have guessed at. 

He’d treated each dream much like he had the first, sitting down on the bed with Harvey and seeing how he reacted. Once, Harvey had let Nick cuddle him to sleep again. Another time, the second they made contact, the dream tore itself apart to the sound of Harvey’s father yelling some expletives that Nick wasn’t familiar with, though he was fairly sure they made reference to men finding intimacy in each other. Mortals were funny, like that. So many rules to how they can find comfort, and with who. 

Tonight, Nick just sat next to Harvey, to see what he would do. They leaned against the headrest and just started at the window for a while, but finally, Harvey moved. His hand brushed up against Nick, then palm slid into palm, and their fingers laced together. Nick squeezed his hand, and they looked at each other. Harvey’s eyes were watery, threatening tears as they generally were, but nothing fell. “How long are you going to torture yourself like this, Harv?” Nick asked. 

Harvey made no reply, other than to shake his head, and look back at the window. Nick sighed, and turned back to it as well, though he noticed that it seemed to have drifted away a bit. It was smaller, less foreboding. Nick stroked his thumb across the back of Harvey’s hand, and was amused to see the window reacted to his touch, drifting further away as if Nick were twisting a dial that controlled it. It didn’t fade completely from view, but other things started coming in, as Harvey’s mind began moving away from his last meeting with Sabrina. 

From out of the drawings grew Greendale, or fragments of it, at least. The Spellman Sister’s Mortuary floated through the air, and a couple of feet away, the entrance to the mines bobbed, it’s cave mouth leading into darkness. The streets and dirt paths of the town formed walls and floors and ceilings, like some M. C. Escher painting - one of the few mortal artists that Nick’s kind had a genuine appreciation for. Various segments of Baxter High were in among the chaos - some external parts, as well as classrooms and hallways. Nothing was the right size or in the right place, and the perspectives seemed to shift wildly as Nick looked from one thing to another. “What’re you thinking?” Nick turned to Harvey. 

Harvey was looking up at the floating objects, but his eyes were glazed over, not really seeing any of it. There were a few more minutes of silence - none of the things floating in the void made any noise - and Nick thought that Harvey was ignoring him as much as he was ignoring everything else. Nick felt a stab of fury. Even with his curiosity in the mortal boy, being ignored like this wasn’t something Nick knew how to take gracefully. But finally, Harvey spoke. “It’s all so… Empty.” 

Looking back up at the void, Nick saw what Harvey meant. There were dozens of different areas floating about, and though the scenes themselves moved, nothing within them did. There were no people, no cars, no animals, or noises. The fragmented Greendale was completely without life. Nick tried to squeeze Harvey’s hand, but realised that his hand was empty. Harvey’s weight disappeared from next to him as, in the blink of an eye, Harvey shifted from the bed to standing up in front of it, looking up at the void. He was muttering something to himself, about ‘needing to find her’. That wasn’t how this was supposed to work - Nick should have been able to see changes in the dream for what they really were. 

He got off the bed and walked up behind Harvey, and put a hand on his shoulder. The hand passed through, as in another blink, Harvey was gone again. “I have to find her!” Nick heard Harvey yell from somewhere above him. Looking up, Nick found him, standing on a street that was, to Nick’s perspective, a wall. With that, Harvey turned and started running up the street. 

“Harvey, wait!” Nick yelled back, but Harvey paid him no heed. Nick sighed, and looked around. It was chaos throughout the void, but this was still just a dream, and dream rules - what little rules there were - still applied. Floating relatively close by was a corridor of Baxter High, taking a few steps back, Nick charged ahead, making a running jump towards it. 

~

“Harvey…” Nick called out, no longer shouting, so much as just talking loudly. He was relatively certain that no matter where either of them were located, or how loudly he spoke, Harvey could hear him. He was, after all, wandering about the streets of Harvey’s mind. He’d been doing so for what felt like hours, now, leaping from place to place, and finding nothing. He’d caught sight of Harvey a few times, but only briefly. Harvey’s mind was definitely still aware of him on some level, though, since once or twice, Nick had fallen through the gaps between segments, only for a brand new place to appear underneath and catch him. Though Harvey was choosing to ignore Nick right now, he wasn’t prepared to let Nick exit the dream entirely. “Come on, Harvey, can we please talk about this?” 

Traversing a dreamscape was no easy task. Sometimes he would leap at one thing, and find himself getting yanked over somewhere else entirely, as if the ‘gravity’ of the world had shifted. There was no real ‘pain’ in the dream, as such, but it was still startling to go crashing head first into a road. Nick had spent the last couple of minutes trying to work his way over to the café that had been the focal point of several dreams, hoping that if Harvey saw Nick somewhere familiar, they might be drawn back together. With one last run down a forest path, Nick leapt once more and finally managed to land in front of the cafés door. Under different circumstances, this would have been a great way to spend an evening, Nick mused. 

“Haaaarvey… I’m in the café again. Why don’t you come over, and I’ll show you some more magic?” He called out as he entered. It was a bluff, since Nick had already tried some fake spells in the hope that Harvey’s mind would supplement the effects, but nothing had happened. Harvey didn’t appear. The café/bookstore was, like the rest of Greendale, empty. The bookshelves were bare, and there was no traditional café clutter on the tables. There were, however, several drawings, one on each table. This was the first time Nick had found any drawings since the fragmented Greendale appeared. 

The pictures were of Nick, he quickly realised. There was one of him casting his protection spell against the Thirteen. Harvey had recreated the hand gesture’s perfectly, not to mention the impressive jaw line that Nick wasn’t certain he could claim to have. Another was of Nick in the jock jacket that some of Harvey’s previous dreams had dressed him in, biting his lip in the way that Nick was pretty sure he didn’t do, but which Harvey’s mind kept showing him as doing, whenever Harvey had relived a dream involving Nick. “These are very good.” Nick called out, knowing that Harvey’s mind was showing these to him for a reason. Nick had no way of knowing if these pictures reflected drawings Harvey had made in real life, but he hoped that they did. “Thank you!” 

He moved from table to table, till he reached the table that they had been sat at when Nick had shown Harvey what magic felt like. There was paper on this table to, but it was a pile of torn up fragments. Nick inspected some of them - there was definitely a drawing on them, but it was in so many pieces that it was impossible to deduce what it was of. Nick had to assume that it was an image of him, and that it was important. But was it torn up because Harvey was trying to hide it from him, or to reflect damage done to the drawing in real life? Nick couldn’t be sure, but he began to move the pieces around, seeing if he could puzzle out what the drawing was. 

It took some time, especially as the pieces seemed to move of their own accord, and the image itself moved on the page, but Nick was up to the challenge. He kept at it, even after he had managed to work out what it was, till every piece was in the right place, and the image could be seen in all its beauty. It set Nick’s heart beating faster, not to mention the effect it had on his lower regions. The drawing was of Nick and Harvey. It was only from the waist up, but they were both topless. Nick held Harvey in his arms, and Harvey had his head rested in the crevice of Nick’s neck, kissing him, as Nick pressed his nose into Harvey’s hair. 

Nick knew that Harvey was standing behind him, even before he turned around. They made eye contact, though Harvey quickly turned away when they did. “I know you’re confused.” Nick said, taking a step towards him. He saw a flinch go through Harvey, but he stood his ground and let Nick get closer. “I’m not trying to make things harder for you… Well, I mean, I’m trying to make SOME things harder for you, but you get what I mean.” Harvey laughed at that, and Nick smiled. He brought his hands up and put them on Harvey’s shoulders. “You don’t need to run from me.” They moved closer together still, till their noses were practically touching. 

“No son of mine…” The voice boomed through the world of Harvey’s dream, making the walls and floor tremble. The ceiling of the café disappeared, as if being peeled off, and outside, towering higher than the tallest building in Greendale, a colossal version of Harvey’s dad stood, glaring down into the café. Nick had to repress the urge to scream, something he did not have much prior experience in. The giant man’s hand came sailing down into the café, and crashed between Harvey and Nick, forcing them apart. Harvey stared wide-eyed at Nick for a moment, then made a run for it. 

“Harvey, wait!” Nick called after him, but he knew it was pointless. He looked back up at Harvey’s Dad, who was lifting up his hand and preparing to swing it again. After the initial shock had worn off, Nick didn’t feel so worried. The furniture of the café had been knocked into the air and was now floating like clouds around him. Nick reached out and grabbed a table, flinging it at the man’s face like it were nothing more than a snowball. “You are not welcome here!” He bellowed as he threw it. It smashed from Harvey’s Dad, who disappeared as it contacted, dissolving into the void around him. 

Nick ran out of the café. Outside, it was almost as if reality were trying to force its way back into the dream. Certain scenes still floated through the air as they had before, but others had begun crashing into each other, or falling in multiple directions, or simply fading out of view entirely. One path between the different platforms stood out to Nick, though, as he could see running along it. Further ahead on that path, he could see the blonde-haired Sabrina from before the night of The Thirteen, and even further still, the entrance to the mine tunnels. That’s where they were both heading, so Nick launched himself into the air, and onto the same path that they were both following. 

~

Dream Sabrina and Harvey had both long since disappeared into the mine entrance by the time Nick had reached it. He shot straight in after them, calling Harvey's name. Behind him, Greendale dissolved into the nothing of dreams. The mine itself seemed fairly solid, however. More so than anything else Nick had encountered since entering this dream, at least. The only thing that made it clearly a figment of Harvey's imagination was the fact that there was only one tunnel ; plenty of twists and turns, but no junctions. Just one long tunnel leading steadily downwards. 

Nick walked for what felt like hours, deeper into the tunnel. There was no actual light source, but he could see easily enough. Every now and then, he would encounter some object or another; A miners helmet, a random sketch, a vaguely satanic-looking statue or carving, and other such detritus of Harvey's mind. Nick didn't stop to dwell on any of it, pushing further and further ahead, determined to catch up with Harvey and… 

And what? Nick didn't know. His plan to try and show Harvey the wonders of pansexuality had spun wildly out of control. Now he was wondering the fragmented mind of a mortal boy on the edge of true despair. His experiment with Harvey was the first time Nick had dreamwalked in the mind of someone he didn't already have intimate knowledge of. He hadn't expected to become so involved, and so desperate to help Harvey ward off his demons. He was beginning to understand why Sabrina was prepared to risk so much for this. Harvey had a kind of raw innocence that Nick had never tasted before, and the part of Nick that wanted to brutally wrench it out of Harvey was rapidly losing ground to other feelings. 

The tunnel began to level out and grow wider. The rocks and the light had started taking on a reddish hew, and smoke drifted around Nicks ankles. In the distance, the tunnel opened out into a room, and in that room, Nick could see the silhouettes of Harvey and Sabrina. Their voices echoed backwards towards him as he approached. 

“You promised you wouldn't hate me, Harvey.” 

“I don't hate you! I love you, ‘Brina, with everything I have! I just don't understand why you keep running away from me!” 

Nick entered into the room, though neither of them took notice of him. Other than the way he had entered, the only exit from the room was via a large hole in the floor, from which red light and smoke spewed forth. In another circumstance, Nick would have been thrilled by it, but it couldn't mean anything good in Harvey's mind. 

“How can you love me?!” The Dream Sabrina demanded. She was crying - she hadn't been a second ago, but now her face looked as though she hadn't stopped crying for weeks. It was a peculiar sight to Nick, but he had to assume Harvey would know how Sabrina would look when she cried, if anyone did. “After knowing what I am?! What I've done?! You can't!” 

“Don't tell me what I can't do!” Harvey half shouted. He grabbed Dream Sabrina by the shoulders. “I love you, Sabrina! I could never hate you! I absolutely love you, whether you believe me or not!” With that, Harvey pulled her in and kissed her. 

Then the dream took a turn for the horrific, even by Nicks standards. The Dream Sabrina’s body began to twist, and grow, and change colours. Her clothes burst off her and dissolved to nothing. From the top of her head sprouted horns, and her legs turned to the legs of a goat. All the while, the kiss was never broken. The worst part of it, to Nick, was the lack of noise to the transformation. Harvey was unaware of it happening, which meant his mind wasn't creating any sound for it. Nick felt powerless to prevent what was about to happen - by the time he realised that the Dream Sabrina was changing into Harvey's own personal Satan, it was already too late. 

They ended the kiss, Harvey opened his eyes, and screamed.


	4. Dream a Little Dream of Me

The night was cold. It was well past the Witching hour, and all of Greendale was silent. The only noise was Nick’s footsteps crunching through the freshly fallen snow. The only thing in Nick’s favour was the moon, hanging bright in the sky, lighting his way. This was ridiculous, and Nick was furious with himself. How did an attempt to subtly brainwash a mortal boy manage to end up with him rushing through the snow at 3AM, just to make sure said mortal boy didn't get too scared by his bad dreams? 

It had been pretty horrific, though. To Nick’s surprise, the dream didn't end immediately when Harvey saw the switch. Instead, Harvey tried to run away, screaming all the while. The devil chased him, shouting in a twisted version of Sabrina’s voice, about how he said he'd never hate her. It only ended a moment later, when Harvey had tripped over, and the beast was able to catch up to him. Nick was not so infatuated with Harvey that some morbid part of his brain didn't wonder about what would have happened next, if Harvey hadn't woke himself up. 

When Nick had returned to the Academy, he had felt a little nauseated over what he had seen, but that didn't stop him. He'd immediately headed out of the academy and into Greendale, towards the Kinkle residence. A few times, he considered turning back, motivated by the distance and how ridiculously cold it was, but he persisted, doing his best to ignore his numbed feet and the wind cutting at his face like glass shards. Eventually, he made it all the way to Harvey's front door. 

He nearly knocked, catching himself only at the last second, remembering that Harvey's Dad would not welcome warmly a male caller at 3AM, he to offer his son comfort after a nightmare. Instead, Nick slowly opened the door - after casting a simple spell to unlock it - and crept in. Everything was dark, but Nick could remember the way, once his eyes adjusted. He checked the living room to see if Harvey had moved, but he wasn't there. Harvey's father was slumped in a chair, sound asleep, with a can of beer that had fallen out of his hand and had now soaked the floor. Nick was about to leave him, when he had an idea. 

The room was messy, and finding a dusty surface wasn't difficult. He wiped some up in his hand, then stood above the sleeping man. He began to chant;

“Sleep, little Witch Hunter,   
though I pray you don't rest well,   
Sleep, little Witch Hunter,   
Horrific dreams of hell,

Sleep, little Witch Hunter,   
Sleep through every yell,   
Sleep, little Witch Hunter,   
Until I break this spell.” 

As he chanted, he sprinkled the dust over the Senior Kinkle, and it glittered as it fell. The spell was cast, and one nightmare was removed for the night, at least. Just to make absolutely certain it had been successful, Nick raised his hand up and delivered an open palmed smack across the mortals face. His head rolled to one side from the force, but otherwise, there was no reaction. Nick resisted the urge to do it again, his hand stinging with the force of his swing, and slipped out of the room, towards Harvey's bedroom door. 

Pressing an ear to the door, Nick listened for noise within, but heard nothing. He had expected to hear Harvey crying, but then he supposed that it had taken a while to get here, and even if Harvey had been brought to tears, he probably would have calmed down by now. He considered just slipping in, wondering if Harvey had just fallen back asleep, but something told him that Harvey was still awake, so instead, Nick knocked on the door. 

There was the sound of bed springs, followed by rummaging and footsteps, and then, the door opened just a little, and one of Harvey's brown eyes peered out. It widened when it saw Nick, and the door opened fully. His face was marked with tear tracks, though he wasn't crying anymore. “What're you…” He started, then paused. His face creased up in fear. “Is this another nightmare?”

“No, Harv. You're not asleep. Could I come in? I think we have a lot to talk about.” 

~

Harvey held the dreamstone in his hand, It's teal colour diminished by the dim light in the room. He had been silent for a few minutes, now, sat on the bed, contemplating everything that Nick had told him about the stone - how it worked, what Nick was using it to do, and what his intentions were inside Harvey's dreams. Nick stood in front of him, waiting silently for him to give some sort of reaction. Harvey's hand tightened around the stone, and he finally looked up again. “So, whenever I've dreamt about you, you were actually there… You know what was happening?”

“Yes.” Nick replied. “Or, most likely, at least. You could have had some actual dreams of me. I wouldn't have any way of telling if you were, unless I encountered a dream version of myself while using the stone, but that never happened.” Nick went to move closer to Harvey, but the flinch that went through Harvey when he did have him pause. The look of fear in Harvey's eyes sent a jolt through Nick’s heart. In the dreams, Nick had only seen that look when Harvey's dad, or the devil appeared. “Look, Harv. How much of your dreams do you actually remember?” 

Harvey shook his head. “I-I don't know. Sometimes I wake up thinking that I didn't dream at all, but then I'll be in class, and some detail will trigger a memory, and then the entire thing comes rushing back. I can remember you, and Sabrina, and my Dad! And… And…” Harvey went noticeably paler, which was impressive, given how dark it was, and how pale he was to start with. “That… Thing.” 

“The goatman?” Nick offered, and Harvey nodded. Nick approached the bed, ignoring Harvey's reaction, and knelt down in front of Harvey. He placed one of his hands on the hand that still clenched the stone. “Harvey, that thing wasn't real. It was just a beast of your minds creation. Sabrina isn't some monster, she's still the girl that loves you, that you promised never to hate.” 

“But it is real! I saw it! Down in the mines when I was a kid!” Harvey pulled away from Nick, stood up, moved away from him entirely. Nick stood up again. He nearly told Harvey that he must have imagined it, but the fear and frustration in Harvey's eyes told him that he was sick of hearing that. Besides, Nick had no real reason to doubt him. The devil in Harvey's dream had looked almost exactly like the statue in the entrance chamber of The Academy of Unseen Arts. It would certainly explain a lot, though Nick doubted it would be a wise move to inform Harvey that Satan himself was apparently stalking his dreams. “Why have you even been doing this to me?!” He demanded, and threw the dreamstone at Nick, though it must bounced off his chest and fell harmlessly to the floor. 

“Honestly?” Nick said, and took a step closer to Harvey, though there was still some distance between them. “I thought you and I would make some good bread for a Sabrina sandwich.” He laughed, and thought he saw the faint curl of a smile on Harvey's lips, before the boy turned away, blushing. “That's it. That's all I was trying to do. I didn't expect…” He didn't finish the sentence. 

“You didn't expect what?” Harvey asked, and for the first time since Nick arrived, Harvey moved closer to him. 

“I didn't get it. When I first met Sabrina, she talked about you like you put the stars in the sky. It made no sense to me. Not the fact that a witch loved a mortal - she is her father's daughter to the core, after all.” Confusion went across Harvey's face, but Nick didn't have the time or the patience to explain that one. “What I didn't get was how anyone could talk about someone else that way. I've never felt that way about anything. I'm not sure any of my kind has, except the Spellmans. But now, I think I'm beginning to understand.” He took a step closer to Harvey. There was very little space between them now. “Seeing you, your mind, your fears, your love. It's something pure, and it's something that I want to taste.” 

Harvey swallowed. “I'm not… I don't think I am… I'm not sure I…” Nick brought a hand up to Harvey's neck, curling his fingers up behind Harvey's ear and into his hair. “I don't know what to think. I don't think I'm gay.” He finally managed to force out, in a tone like he was informing Nick that someone had died. 

Nick laughed. “That's good. Neither am I. I think Sabrina would be very upset with us, if we were.” He brought his mouth up to Harvey's ear. “This can be anything you want it to be, Harv. All you have to do is say, and I'll stay. Tell me, and I'll go. I used magic to help you see things a little differently, but I'm not here to force you, or to make your life harder. I just want to be your friend.” 

“You've got a funny way of making friends.” Harvey said, and smiled. They stood in silence for what felt to Nick like eons. He could feel the heat pouring off Harvey, and he wanted nothing more than to pull the mortal into his arms and learn every inch of his body, like he already had with Harvey's mind. But for anything he had done to Harvey over the past few weeks to be okay, Harvey had to make the first real choice. 

Harvey's fingers interlaced with Nick’s. “Will you stay here?” Harvey asked. “I don't know what I want, but I want you to stay here tonight. I don't want any more nightmares.” 

Nick squeezed his hand. “I don't know if I can keep you from having them, but I can be here when you wake up, if that's what you want?” Harvey nodded, then hesitated, and looked at the door. “Oh, don't worry, he won't wake up till after I leave.” Nick winked, which made Harvey smile. 

~ 

They were curled up together on Harvey's bed, with Nick playing big spoon. Nick wrapped himself around Harvey, and if Harvey had any objections to which parts of him were lined up with which parts of Nick, he hadn't voiced them. Instead, they'd just laid there, unmoving, and not speaking Nick enjoyed the feeling of being so close to Harvey. It felt different than it had in Harvey's dream. Harvey's mind didn't know how to create all the sensations of reality, especially with his own body. The heat he made, the softness of his skin, the smell of autumn in his hair, all of it.

Harvey had fallen back to sleep, but Nick stayed awake, almost unwilling to let the night pass any faster than it absolutely had to. The slow rise and fall of Harvey’s chest was the only thing Nick had to measure the passing of time. He couldn’t remember ever really spending time together with someone like this. For certain, the Weird Sisters had never been much for snuggling, and Nick couldn’t recall any other partner he’d had being fond of it, either. He had no idea why, since this was the most relaxed Nick had felt since before he first went to the Academy. 

A quiet whimpering noise came from Harvey. Nick didn’t think anything of the first one, but soon, Harvey was making all sorts of sounds in his sleep, and he had begun to move around; squirming in Nick’s arms. He was having a nightmare, Nick assumed, and squeezed Harvey tighter to try and stop his thrashing about. As a result of his movements, Harvey’s butt was grinding into Nick, which was a stimulus he really didn’t need right now. “Harvey…” Nick said softly into his ear, trying to wake him. “Haaaarvey. It’s just a nightmare, you need to wake up. Harvey!” 

With a shout, Harvey awoke, and shot up, breaking out of Nick’s arms, breathing heavily. He looked frantically around the room, as if expecting to find devils all around him. “You’re okay, Harv. I’m here. You’re safe.” Nick sat up and stroked a hand down Harvey’s hair and onto his back, as Harvey began to realise he had been dreaming, and calmed down a little. He looked back at Nick, and Nick saw that his eyes were watering, on the verge of tears. Placing a hand on the back of Harvey’s head, Nick pulled him back down onto the bed, with Harvey’s head resting on his bear chest. Harvey didn’t resist, and wrapped his arm over Nick’s stomach, letting Nick play loosely with his hair. 

“Are they ever going to stop?” Harvey asked, sighing heavily. His voice was higher than normal, and he squeezed Nick tight. “These nightmares? I’m so tired. I just want to sleep normally again. Do you know how to stop them?” 

“No.” Nick replied. “I don’t know any spells that stop nightmares. I can try to find one for you - Hilda Spellman is good for that sort of thing. I’ll ask her. In the meantime…” He gripped Harvey’s hair so that Harvey would tilt his head up to look at Nick. “I’ll be here for you - if not literally, then keep the dreamstone under your pillow, and I’ll check your dreams. I can wake you up, whenever you need me to, yeah?” 

Harvey nodded, and smiled, but he didn’t return his head to his resting position. Instead, they stared at each other, for a long time, with neither of them breaking eye contact. Nick continued stroking Harvey’s hair gently. Harvey’s thumb was stroking against Nick’s side - Nick was trying very hard not to squirm, since he was quite ticklish there, but he feared it would ruin the mood if he suddenly shrieked like a child. Harvey’s eyes flickered as his attention moved from Nick’s eyes, slightly downwards, then back up, repeatedly. Nick’s heart started beating faster; he could practically see the gears turning inside Harvey’s head as Harvey made his decision. Nick didn’t give him any further encouragement - for everything Nick did inside Harvey’s dreams to be okay, Harvey had to make the decision himself. 

Finally, Harvey sighed, closed his eyes, leaned in and kissed Nick. Nick let his eyes drift closed as well. Every experience Nick had with Harvey had been nothing like anything else he had done before, and this was no different. Every lover Nick had ever had was rough, forceful, every kiss was an act of aggression, a declaration of a war that would (usually) take place in the bedroom. Harvey’s kiss was gentle. His lips were soft. No tongues were rammed anywhere. No nails were dug into skin. It was a kiss, nothing more, nothing less. They broke apart a few times, but Harvey would press them back together again immediately. Though it probably didn’t even last half a minute in reality, time seemed to slow down, as if they were back in a dream. 

When they parted for the final time, they looked at each other once more. Harvey was smiling - after a few seconds, his smile grew so wide, it almost looked as though he might never close his lips again. Nick smiled too, and brought a hand to Harvey’s face, cupping it and stroking a thumb over his cheek. “Are you sure about this, Harv? I don’t want you to f-” Nick never got to the end of his sentence, as Harvey’s answer was to kiss him once more. 

~ 

What Nick and Harvey did that night couldn’t really even be called sex, yet it was the most stimulating sensation that Nick could remember having in a long time. Harvey was shy, clumsy, and scared, but Nick guided him every step of the way. It was fascinating to spend so much time playing with someone who clearly had so little knowledge of his own body. Harvey fumbling with his boxers was somehow more arousing than the most elegant strip tease. The way Harvey gasped when Nick took hold of his ass and squeezed gently thrilled Nick more than any moaning orgasmic roar. Harvey’s awkward hand grip - one that had clearly never held any but his own - was every bit as stimulating as anyone Nick had ever mercilessly torn apart in the past. 

Nick couldn’t stop himself from using a little magic that night - just a small spell, to stop the excited mortal from exploding too soon, before Nick had the chance to really show Harvey what it was like to be with another man. Nick swallowed him whole, and Harvey moaned so loud, Nick almost worried that the spell on his father might not hold. When Harvey tried to return the favour, he ended up gagging and choking himself, but he came back up smiling, and nodded vigorously when Nick suggested that maybe that was something he could learn to do another time. 

By the end of the night, they were both thoroughly spent, and without a care for the bodily fluids they were laying in, Nick pulled the covers over them, and together they fell asleep. Harvey slept through the rest of the night and well into the next morning, without once being bothered by a nightmare. When he finally awoke, Nick was still right there with him, and showed him just a little bit more about his own body. Nick rolled them over, so that he was straddling Harvey’s hips, gently pressing his ass into Harvey, who couldn’t take more than a minute of the way Nick bucked and grinded his hips against him. 

When they were finally done, they stayed in bed, kissing and exploring each other for at least another hour, before they finally accepted that reality wouldn’t wait for them any longer. Nick didn’t have a phone, but he showed Harvey how to call for him, using a straw doll and a strand of Nick’s hair. Nick made it very clear that it was okay for Harvey to call him anytime he wanted, and helped Harvey straighten out his room before lifting the spell from Harvey’s dad, and slipping out the front door.

Nick had no idea if he would ever be able to get Harvey and Sabrina to come around to the Warlock way of thinking about sex and relationships. In fact, he had no idea what would happen at all, and that was genuinely exciting to him. With every partner he had before, the end result had been predictable from the first time they made eye contact. Maybe this was why Spellman’s found mortals so irresistible. Nick supposed that eventually, he’d find out.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfic I've written in like, a decade, and the first thing I've posted on AoOO, so sorry if it's rough around the edges.


End file.
